There was once a small storybook town 30 minutes north of San Francisco named San Anselmo, which housed the Tamalpais Theater (named after the "Sleeping Lady" hill, Mount Tamalpais, which towers over the town) - a fine example of 1930s 'neighbourhood' Art Deco motion picture exhibition palaces. The theater sat at the hub of traffic coming from the wild western side of the county, the southern commuter flow, and the eastern corridor which flowed to and from places like Berkeley (past San Quentin State Prison). Nestled in the heart of Marin County, San Anselmo is still there, though the Tamalpais Theater is long closed. And San Anselmo might have forever remained an anonymous suburban bedroom community had George Lucas not lived a few blocks up from the Tamalpais (on Park Way, the first home of LucasFilm) during the days he was trying to get a little project about a 'used future' off the ground - days before and concurrent with the showing of "Carrie".

 I saw "The Godfather Part II" at the Tamalpais - and I saw the 3rd "Dirty Harry" film ("Magnum Force") there too. I saw a one-day 'festival' there, including lots of animation and Zeffirelli's "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" with Chip, who would later go to work for Francis Coppola and co-design Francis' Silverfish 'electronic cinema' directing trailer (and I've always wondered if Lucas was the force behind that 'festival'). And I saw "Carrie" the night it opened there, some 25 years ago. It was a far more innocent time - ingrained cynicism was just beginning to root itself in our consciousness (to be passed on to our progeny), and the scariest movie we'd ever seen had been "The Exorcist" a couple of years before (it STILL may be the scariest movie ever made). Everyone wore the silliest clothing imaginable (and the style is back, like a nightmare). It was, for all intents and purposes, a more innocent time.

Stephen King was not a brand name yet. Neither was Brian De Palma. De Palma had made a couple of quirky comedies with Robert DeNiro ("Greetings" and its sequel "Hi Mom") earlier, and a couple of unusual thrillers ("Sisters" and "Obsession") - his films were known to fans of 'independent' productions, not having gotten the widest of distribution. None of those, however, set up what "Carrie" would hold in store for the mostly young audience there to see heartthrob John Travolta on the big screen after watching him on television as the lunkhead Vinnie Barbarino in the sitcom "Welcome Back Kotter".
Then the film started and the high school girls' shower scene under the titles - all nubile young creatures in various stages of undress moving in slow motion, and lovely Sissy Spacek all nude and glistening as the water cascaded over her, lathering herself, almost fondling - and then the blood and the hysteria began. Later would come the running and the screaming. Carrie White has discovered her first menses (no, not the high IQ club) in the girls' locker room shower, and is so distraught she is sent home to her mother Margaret (Piper Laurie), a radical evangelical Christian woman who sees reproduction as the tool of Satan. Mom is so wildly fundamental (accent on 'mental') she has not told Carrie about periods. The senior prom is coming up and the popular Tommy Ross (William Katt) invites Carrie as his date. What she doesn't know is he has been put up to it by his girlfriend Sue Snell (Amy Irving), feeling guilty about having taunted poor Carrie in the shower. Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen), the quintessential high school tease/bitch, has other plans - to ruin Carrie's night - enlisting the aid of her boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta, playing his "Kotter" character as a western street punk, and listed fifth in the cast). What these two do spells cataclysm for many, in one of the best half-hours of revenge ever put on film. To say that "Carrie" did what it was supposed to do to you back in 1976 would be understatement - it is a classic for good reason. Practically every trick in the book of the day was used to great effect in the show. For $1.8 million in 1976 dollars "Carrie" looks remarkably better than its cost would suggest - and works better than a budget ten times that amount would have. Visually the film is masterfully done - compelling in it's use of camera movement and frame rates, it's color palette and compositions often reminiscent of classic paintings. Seeing it in the Tamalpais Theater in !976 with an audience of the uninitiated I can truthfully tell you the audience jumped, laughed, shrieked and gasped at every turn - as we were supposed to. What sets "Carrie" apart from the films before it is a psychological and sexual depth rarely seen in low-budget horror films, for "Carrie" IS about a type of Freudian hysteria; the repression/suppression of natural sexual urges, and the perversion of them into religious frenzy, had rarely been tackled so cleverly, nor so openly. Many scenes which were quite scandalous in their day have become commonplace, and as such have lost their impact and significance - from Nancy Allen's front seat 'manipulation' of Travolta to the carnage later, "Carrie" broke taboos and as such added greatly to the overall impact of the film. It's not easy today, as "Carrie" has achieved classic status, to understand the impact it had on a fresh audience then - simply put, too much is already known about the scares to keep them scary. Sissy Spacek ("3 Women", "Coal Miner's Daughter", "JFK") had already established herself as a fine young actress in Terrence Malick's little seen and brilliant "Badlands", but here she pulled off a tour de force, going from the painfully shy and angry Carrie to the belle of the ball, and finally the Almighty's wrecking ball, in deft strokes. Piper Laurie ("The Hustler", "Twin Peaks") as her mother, after 15 years away from the screen, is simply marvelous as the crackpot zealot who carries her fear of her own sexuality to extremes - she is powerful and yet pitiful at the same time. Amy Irving ("The Fury", "Yentl", "Crossing Delancey") and Nancy Allen ("Dressed To Kill", "Out Of Sight") are very good as the conscience-ridden and cruel-hearted students, Betty Buckley ("Frantic", "Wyatt Earp", Broadway's "Cats") is very believable as the phys. ed. teacher, and John Travolta (that awful L. Ron Hubbard flick where he played a scaly alien) doesn't particularly stand out in his role as the dimwit whom Allen drags around by his you-know-what - though his first big screen appearance, there is nothing here to tell us what he would become. Priscilla Pointer plays Irving's mother quite well - appropriate, since she is Irving's mother in real life. De Palma had great help aside from the hungry newcomer actors, too: William Kenney and Jack Fisk (who was also Spacek's husband) did the art direction/production design; Pino Donaggio wrote the score without borrowing TOO heavily from Bernard Hermann; Mario Tosi is credited as the Director of Photography; Rosanna Norton did the costumes; and Paul Hirsch did the remarkable editing (it was his idea to speed up the tuxedo shop sequence, for example).

Picture: A quite good transfer from less-than-sterling elements is offered by MGM this outing - in anamorphic 1.78:1. The elements aren't terrible - although the first shot, of the girls volleyball game, has a vertical stripe running through it - considering the film stock available at the time, and the stylized shots with diffusion, split-diopters and the like. Shots which look soft were intended to be soft, and shots with low contrast and some grain were the result of pushing the film and/or flashing it to get exposure in the shadows. Colors are reasonably well-saturated and look natural where they are meant to be - certainly this is the best this film has looked in some time (and not much different than I recall it looking theatrically upon release). Sound: A 'digitally-enhanced' Dolby Digital 5.1 track graces the disc, as does the original mono track. The 5.1 track ads some nice ambiance to the scenes and the score, and doesn't seem to try for much more, though the separations up front are pretty good. There is some age-related lack of frequency response, but not enough to make the track less than lively and engrossing throughout. The mono track is clear and well-detailed, and purists will be quite satisfied with it - I, for one, am glad it is included. Extras: Two very good 40 minute documentaries directed by Laurent Bouzereau highlight the extras. "Acting Carrie" is told from the performance viewpoint - all but John Travolta show up now to reflect "once upon a time...". It is extremely interesting to hear the actors talk about their craft - about what they used in their thinking to achieve a particular emotional state during a sequence - their entire approach to their character and the nature of the film's subtext. "Visualizing Carrie" is about the visual look and flow of the film, wherein I learned something I hadn't known: Bill Paxton, now an actor ("Aliens", "One False Move", "Twister", "Apollo 13" and "Titanic"), had been Jack Fisk's assistant in the art department on "Carrie" - it was he who found the Farmer John's meat packing factory in downtown Los Angeles which had the mural along it's wall, and was used for the pig bashing scene. However, it would be nice to know who the cinematographer was who shot much of the high school sequences - a fact all involved coyly avoid providing. An interesting 6 minute segment with writer Lawrence D. Cohen and Betty Buckley talks about the Broadway show "Carrie - The Musical" they did together - and actually piqued my interest in seeing a staging of the show, as it sounds like modern grand opera. There is a 6 minute montage of stills from the film, behind-the-scenes (including one of a blood-spattered Spacek smoking what appears to be a big fat handrolled doob- - umm - errr - cigarette - yeah, that's the ticket!) and advertising materials. Three sections of text written by Mr. Bouzereau describe Stephen King's origins of the "Carrie" book manuscript (his first published novel), Lawrence D. Cohen's screenplay, and the major differences between the book and the finished film. And the original theatrical trailer completes the extra features on the disc.

Having risen in status over the years and now recognized as a classic horror film, MGM has done the right thing by "Carrie" with this new 25th Anniversary Special Edition DVD, which no fan should be without. While far from exhaustive it is thorough, respectful and blessedly free of the media-hype extras which come bundled with newer films - the retrospective documentaries go quite a long way in helping us understand why "Carrie" works as well as it does.. I was just thinking - if I get enough great DVDs like this one maybe I'll move back to San Anselmo - it really doesn't matter if the local movie palace is no more, because fresh life is being breathed into the classics in new DVD presentations. Thanks MGM.